Mount Cook Plateau is one of the most popular destinations amongst mountain climbers visiting South Island of New Zealand. But to our surprise, we were the only three guys in the hut for five days! The next couple of days of recconnaisance up to the West Ridge of Mt Cook and Linda Glacier provided the answers: massive crevasses - some tens of meters deep - were blocking the way and Linda Glacier (along which most of guides thake their clients to the summit) was impassable - the season was over...

While at the glaciers: there are people that will tell you that global warming is a scam created by scientist to get more money for research, or whatever theories they have. But look at the facts: the glaciers are retreating and they are retreating because of increasing average temperatures. If you take a look at the above panorama, you don't need to be a genius to tell that the Tasman Glacier is only a fraction of what is used to be - the side moraine climbs few hundred feet above the current level of the glacier marking it's level from the distant past. Just a thought...

Phew! - that was uncomfortable.. standing on a sharp rock and trying to keep the weight on the wire in the same spot while taking individual shots was a bit tricky, but important to keep the parallax error fairly low. To add more to it, I thought all the effort was going to go for nothing when I reallized later, when examining the photos, that they were taken in aperture priority rather than manual mode, which was essential for HDR output. Fortunately, I managed to rescue the situation, though the result is far from perfect...